Biblical Theological Seminary RobertC. Newman

SOMECALCUATIONS DEMONSTRATING

SCIENTIFICPROBLEMS OF EVOLUTION

Among several serious scientific problemsfacing evolutionary theory (e.g., origin of life from nonlife, rarity oftransitional fossils, formation of complex organs and systems, esp. the brain),the most pervasive problem is the production of high levels of organization byrandom processes.

For instance, Carl Sagan speaks of theinformation content of a simple living cell as equivalent to 100 million pagesof the Encyclopaedia Britannica!

Some have played down this problem bythinking that given enough time, random processes will produce any level oforganization. In one popularremark: "Give enough monkeys enough time, and they will eventually typethe Encyclopaedia Britannica." In response we ask, "How manymonkeys? How much time?"

Consider the following problem:  Let us have as many monkeys as we wishtrained to type at 3 chars/sec on as many monkeyproof typewriters as wewish. The typewriters aresimplified, with

only 33 keys, consisting of 26 capitalletters, a space and six punctuation marks (. , : ; ? !).  Instead of typing the whole EncyclopaediaBritannica, we will justhave the monkeys type the

title in caps, "ENCYCLOPAEDIABRITTANICA."

The job involved can be calculated (inunits of monkey‑years) as follows: The title, including the space between words, consists of 24characters. For each character,one could type any one of

the 33 keys. Thus there are 33x33x33x33... (24 times) possible combinationsa monkey could type anytime he or she hits 24 keys in succession.  Using logarithms, the number ofcombinations will be:

log₁₀N = 24 x log₁₀ 33 = 24 x 1.51851 = 36.44424

Converting back to regular numbers, N =2.781 x 10³⁶

The time necessary to type all thesecombinations would be:

T= N/(no. monkeys)x(rate) = 2.781x10³⁶/(no. monkeys)(3/sec).

Or the job J, in monkey‑years is:        J = Tx(no.monkeys)

J= 2.781E+36/3/sec = E+36 monkey‑sec = 3E+28 monkey‑years

J= 30 billion billion billion monkey‑years!

In the twenty billion years since the big‑bang,one would need 1.5 billion billion monkeys to do the job!